14 DAY TRIAL // Constant dieters have the most trouble when it comes to keeping the weight off after the diet is over, recent research has stressed. However, according to experts cited by FitSugar, that is not the only challenge people who are struggling with their weight face, since yo-yo dieting also makes keeping the weight off very hard. It’s a vicious circle and it takes a lot of discipline to break it.
We were also telling you a while back that people who had lost a lot of weight and had a history of an unhealthy relationship with food faced their biggest challenge months after going on a diet – namely, when they were done with it. Keeping the weight off can be quite tricky – and downright impossible for some, especially if they’re caught in the loop known as yo-yo dieting, experts point out. This happens because of the way the body learns to react to a new diet.
“Constant yo-yo dieting makes it harder to keep the weight off because when your body mass decreases by 10 percent or more, it ends up slowing down your metabolism by 11 to 15 percent. Going on and off diets also changes other aspects of your physiology, such as increasing the hunger hormone ghrelin, and decreasing the hormone leptin, which makes you feel satisfied and full. Doctors believe strict diets which are low in calories are the worst. Your body may see restricting your calorie intake as a threat to its survival, and that's why it holds on to the extra pounds on your tush,” FitSugar writes.
There is also the question of how one is programmed to think of dieting. “Not only does flip-flopping between a size 6 and a size 16 make it harder to keep weight off, but research also shows that some people are more hardwired for yo-yo dieting than others. Doctors refer to them as conditioned hypereaters. They have a harder time resisting temptation because reward circuits in their brains stay active until all the food is gone from their plates. Fifty percent of obese people and 30 percent of overweight people are conditioned hypereaters,” the same e-zine underlines.
The bad news is that it takes a lot of work to develop a different relationship with food. The good news is that it is possible. Yo-yo celebrity dieters Kirstie Alley, Janet Jackson and Oprah Winfrey have had the same kind of problems in their life as well – and they can attest that breaking the vicious circle is a never-ending struggle.